New Shield System Breaks PVP

You could make gravity drives with large rocks since before artificial mass block were in the game, I think it's fine... it's just a fun gameplay mechanic, you still can't go faster than the artificial speed limit, and controlling your ship with a gravity drive on is kind of hard... all it lets you do is accelerate fast, you can't control it like a normal ship.

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Btw, if I fling lots of stone at a safe zone will the rocks go through the zone wall of will it bounce off? I've not actually tried this.

I always wondered why Keen didn't just make the store/contract blocks indestructible? Wasn't the purpose to stop them from being destroyed when the owner was offline?

But, of course, certain individuals would build ships entirely out of store/contract blocks and claim it's fair because the game allows it.

That's the thing about exploits (and offline raiding is an exploit). The people that use them don't see any harm. Exploits have no counter because they're unintended. Using an exploit either amounts to cheating, or it facilitates cheating. The fact that the exploit is possible (and the longer it exists) is taken as permission from the developer to continue exploiting. In the case of the safe zone, people started discussing possible exploits right in the chat of the reveal stream. Like the gravity generator, the safe zone will be exploited, used in unattended ways, for as long as it exists, and the people that do it will just say they're being clever. No harm done because it's "allowed."

I like the way they actually FORCE you to engineer thrust based on your ships center of gravity.

I often see a debate about thrusters having enough thrust, or tiered thrusters, or bigger thrusters for vanilla... GDs are a solution one has to engineer, rather than paste a zillion thrusters on the beautiful lines of your ship.. ships fly off twisting and turning, full speed, like a booger flicked by the finger of Clang.

The argument that GDs are not balanced can be countered with the difficulty in setting them up in any useful sort of way beyond having an escape skingshot.

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Gravity drives force you to engineer your ships better. They solve all the thrust/mass issues. Heck, why did they even bother putting rocket engines in the game?

See, when you use a mod, you're playing a modded game. Modded games have no rules. When you play the vanilla game, you are playing the game envisioned by Marek Rosa and Keen Software House. THAT game has rules, and the gravity drive breaks them. They shouldn't work, but they do, and the only way to stop them from working is to nerf them to near-uselessness or remove them from the game entirely. Keen won't remove them because people that like gravity drives won't let them. Nerfing them is an option that I have advocated for years but Keen seems uninterested. Gravity drives in and of themselves are harmless. They apparently don't affect performance in any significant way so they continue to exist. The problem is that they become the number one argument for allowing other things that should not be in the standard game. Because they exist, other things should be allowed to exist. It's not a fair point, but that doesn't stop people from using it.

I just thought that needed to be said. Now I'll go back to watching you folks try to figure out how to make safe zones work.

If a gravity drive is considered an exploit, then cheesing the safe zone like that is certainly an exploit.

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I kinda like Gravity Drives... off subject,but...

I like the way they actually FORCE you to engineer thrust based on your ships center of gravity.

I often see a debate about thrusters having enough thrust, or tiered thrusters, or bigger thrusters for vanilla... GDs are a solution one has to engineer, rather than paste a zillion thrusters on the beautiful lines of your ship.. ships fly off twisting and turning, full speed, like a booger flicked by the finger of Clang.

The argument that GDs are not balanced can be countered with the difficulty in setting them up in any useful sort of way beyond having an escape skingshot.

And they're cool and warp-drivey.

If you're in a room with a GD and it's running, doing shit, you WILL die. That's pretty cool.

.. AND the JRGD? like total amazeballz.

I like GD's just fine.

..Just sayin'

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The problem with grav drives is the huge amount of thrust you get . Even a very large ship can go 0-100 instantly. Also once you've played the game for a little bit, you know exactly how to build a grav drive ship. It's not even hard to make.

About Grav Drives, I take it that without a decend script, they're of no use. As Keen doesn't allow scripts on their servers, they don't have a problem with that. Controlling a GD by hand? Good luck with that. It's possible, but absolutely no fun. It's like flying a Bell Textron Jet-Pack

About Grav Drives, I take it that without a decend script, they're of no use. As Keen doesn't allow scripts on their servers, they don't have a problem with that. Controlling a GD by hand? Good luck with that. It's possible, but absolutely no fun. It's like flying a Bell Textron Jet-Pack

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It's still very easy to go in one direction using just toolbar keys for grav gens and mass blocks.

For everyone's edification, I suggest watching this video by LastStandGamers which demonstrates the main ways in which safe zones are extremely unbalanced, as well as the current exploits with them. I do think the concept is promising, but Keen needs to make safe zones less powerful (such as by disabling shooting, jumping, building, etc. inside) or easier to defeat (such as by implementing an anti safe zone block that warns the owner it is under attack and gives an hours-long grace period to fight back or relocate).

Clearly you do want to be able to raid people while they're offline as you want a 15 minute window before their safe zone can activate, once everyone is offline

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OP's personal playstyle is not actually what this thread is about. I am sure Bullet_Force is an interesting person, but let's talk about the game instead of relying on ad hominem arguments.

The point of the suggested 15 minute window on offline protection is to avoid that protection being abused. If I knew my offline shield would instantly appear around my base when I left, I could log off as soon as I saw an enemy to protect my stuff.

safe zone was NOT made with pvp in mind, but to ensure folks playing with the economy feature enabled would be able to enjoy said feature and have a chance to interact with it.

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Safe zones are all about pvp. If pvp were disabled, you would not need safe zones. The point of this thread is that safe zones become a dominant, unstoppable force that you can wield to hurt other players. You can:
1) Make an indestructible turret to kill anybody nearby,
2) Take over any area without a safe zone so long as you have a few seconds to turn it on,
3) Ensure that your base never dies to anything (regardless of whether you defend it), and
4) Throw up an invincible shield in seconds if a battle in your large grid is not going your way.

Lastly you won't get much sympathy from people here as there are already solutions to your problem. If you don't like the safe zones, then don't use them on the servers you are admin of.

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That can be said of anything. But as you point out, safe zones do address two major problems with the game--bases are sitting ducks and there is no way to safely trade. I want those features, but I don't want indestructible shields with no counter.

I always wondered why Keen didn't just make the store/contract blocks indestructible?

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Stores and contract blocks need to be fed power and also are not nearly as useful if your customer cannot connect to them with a connector. So the whole trade station needs to be protected. (Also, you know people would use them as armor if they were indestructible.)

OP's personal playstyle is not actually what this thread is about. I am sure Bullet_Force is an interesting person, but let's talk about the game instead of relying on ad hominem arguments.

The point of the suggested 15 minute window on offline protection is to avoid that protection being abused. If I knew my offline shield would instantly appear around my base when I left, I could log off as soon as I saw an enemy to protect my stuff.

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When someone cites playstyle arguments as part of why they want something to change then playstyle absolutely becomes part of the argument. In this instance he cites his pvp playstyle and how he feels it breaks pvp by not allowing offline raiding and so on. In other words because the block interferes with his playstyle he wants it changed for everyone else in game. So because he doesn't like it due to his playstyle he now thinks he should be allowed to have it changed for everyone else in game and dictate to me and others how a block in our games and servers should function based purely on his whims. Instead of just doing the simple thing and disabling the block on his servers or asking admins of servers he plays on to disable the block, he wants it changed for everyone else in game. Yeah no, you don't get to cite arguments like that and then try to hide be a bogus "ad hominem" claim when someone criticizes that logic.

Secondly if he's not interested in offline raiding as he claims, then he wouldn't suggest a 15 minute window for the safe zone to activate that only begins AFTER the last member of said faction has logged out, and would leave the base a sitting duck for 15 minutes. As the classic saying goes, I don't need a PhD to know bulls*** when I hear it. So he claims he's not interested in offline raiding but feels anything goes in a pvp situation, including offline raiding, but would much rather folks be online to fight him. He's not interested in offline raiding and would rather fight the people, but conveniently the "solution" he suggests allows him a perfect 15 minute opportunity to pillage a base with no interference from the faction it belongs to. Anyone with a functioning brain stem can see that "solution" for what it really is. As is right now there is a 30 second charge up time for the zone to come online. If you don't make it then oops, so sad for you, now you have to find another way, either by starving them out, or wait for them to leave. It's little more than he doesn't like the fact folks have outs to pvp and wants to remove those outs and force people to play the way he wants to play. Yeah it doesn't work like that.

Safe zones are all about pvp. If pvp were disabled, you would not need safe zones. The point of this thread is that safe zones become a dominant, unstoppable force that you can wield to hurt other players. You can:
1) Make an indestructible turret to kill anybody nearby,
2) Take over any area without a safe zone so long as you have a few seconds to turn it on,
3) Ensure that your base never dies to anything (regardless of whether you defend it), and
4) Throw up an invincible shield in seconds if a battle in your large grid is not going your way.

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No you would still need safe zones actually. Simply because the pvp is disabled wouldn't stop "that one guy" from running around and destroying all the NPC trading stations and griefing people that way by denying them access to the economy features. Since they can't pillage the other people via pvp, they'll just ruin their game and their fun by destroying the NPC stations. The point of the safe zone was to guarantee that people would be able to interact with the NPC trading stations without all of them having been destroying by "that one guy" just being a douchebag. All of your little points there there have easy solutions to them.

1: Fix the zones so that if damage is disabled, turrets also can't fire. They can track objects as normal but can't fire since damage is prevented and it would just waste the ammo anyways. Thus anyone outside the zone doesn't have to worry about the "invincible turret".
2: This is only an issue when trying to take an already occupied area from someone. In this instance using the safe zone to force people out of their own base is an exploit and is NOT intended behavior and needs to be patched and changed. Thus is not a valid argument to cite as to how it supposedly breaks pvp.
3: Boo hoo you can't just run headlong into a base guns blazing and actually have to use strategy and play for the long game.
4: Then the attacking faction better hope they've secured that safe zone block from being activated or cut off its supply of power or they're screwed. Again boo hoo you actually have to think and plan out your attack instead of just running in guns blazing like a Rambo knockoff.

That can be said of anything. But as you point out, safe zones do address two major problems with the game--bases are sitting ducks and there is no way to safely trade. I want those features, but I don't want indestructible shields with no counter.

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Simply because you don't like the counters doesn't mean it has no counters. Instead of a quick in and out, you now actually have to plan for the long game. Welcome to wars of attrition, I'll be your drill instructor for this. For guys who claim to like pvp, you folks wouldn't last long in some of the original PVP maps in a game like World of Warcraft where the matches could take several hours or even days. Those kinds of matches actually felt like a war. With that said the safe zones for npc stations are invulnerable and can run indefinitely as they should. The player versions need zone chips, and require massive amounts of power to run. You have counters available to the player version, but they are not quick and won't give people their instant gratification. If you dislike the player safe zones, then turn them off and disable their use. That's the best option you have, or play with like minded people who also feel the same way. The rest of the game shouldn't be having a feature completely changed just to suit one minority group's playstyle.

What you guys need to understand is that you as pvp players were NOT the target audience of the update and the game does not revolve around you.

The 15 minute activation delay after you log off would help against offline raiding, a 15 minute looting spree is not the point. I don't get why some of you guys keep ripping into Bullet_Force for this. Say the owner of a base logs off for a week - thats 168 hours. They come back after having the sheild up for 167.75 hours and all is well as nobody happened to stumble across them in the first 15 minutes because they did a check and nobody was waiting.

A 15 minute delay removes any benifit to combat logging, often a major problem in games like Space Engineers with persistent worlds. If logging out protects you (usually does, player dissapears - cryopods?) and your stuff (which an instantly activating version of the safe zone which turns on when the owner logs off would do) from any possible attack then people will log out to avoid combat. It will happen. Reminds me of the practice in minecraft pvp of digging a giant hole underneath where somebody combat logged so they fall into it when they come back. I guess the SE equivient of this would be to lay a minefeild of turrets and other mixed nasties around the players offline protected base.

Also piling onto the grav drive thing - think how much better it is to have a big fat boost button on your hotbar. It can act as a panic button, accellerating your ship almost instantly to max speed and leaving all but the most attentive assailants in the dust. And even if they do notice, they've got 8 seconds to match velocity with thier own drive before you're out of turret range and they can't close the gap. That's just talking defensivly though, such a huge speed advantage is extremely valuable for the attacker as well. Speed is good.

It strikes me that the safe zone was primarily made for the npc stations else people would go around trashing them. Forces players to play nice rather than just turning up and grinding it down for parts, which is.... ehhh. I don't really like that it forces that way, feels rather artificial. Feels very multiplayer focused actually, what with certain types of players who would go around nuking them for the fun of it and then ruining it for everyone else. If it were singleplayer only then sure just go ahead and blow some up, all is fine. Giving this kind of power to players though, maybe that wasn't the best idea. Just like water finds a crack, players find an exploit.

If Keen were that concerned over these exploits they would have fixed them already, so we have to assume they are "okay" with them. Other exploits in the past they did not like were addressed and patched up rather quickly.

Also pretty sure I have heard people begging for shields for ages.. the safe zone of course isnt a shield really but as close to one as you will get to one in Vanilla, so people got what they wanted........yet still complain.....shocker.....lol

If Keen were that concerned over these exploits they would have fixed them already, so we have to assume they are "okay" with them. Other exploits in the past they did not like were addressed and patched up rather quickly.

Also pretty sure I have heard people begging for shields for ages.. the safe zone of course isnt a shield really but as close to one as you will get to one in Vanilla, so people got what they wanted........yet still complain.....shocker.....lol

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The gravity drive in paticular has been around so long it might as well have an official keen stamp of approval and signed off by Marek himself as works as intended. I can see some of the safe zone exploits being patched though, not been too long out. Exploits get so much worse to remove with age. If they'd removed grav drives within a week nobody would have cared. Now there would be a storm.

The 15 minute activation delay after you log off would help against offline raiding, a 15 minute looting spree is not the point. I don't get why some of you guys keep ripping into Bullet_Force for this. Say the owner of a base logs off for a week - thats 168 hours. They come back after having the sheild up for 167.75 hours and all is well as nobody happened to stumble across them in the first 15 minutes because they did a check and nobody was waiting.

A 15 minute delay removes any benifit to combat logging, often a major problem in games like Space Engineers with persistent worlds. If logging out protects you (usually does, player dissapears - cryopods?) and your stuff (which an instantly activating version of the safe zone which turns on when the owner logs off would do) from any possible attack then people will log out to avoid combat. It will happen. Reminds me of the practice in minecraft pvp of digging a giant hole underneath where somebody combat logged so they fall into it when they come back. I guess the SE equivient of this would be to lay a minefeild of turrets and other mixed nasties around the players offline protected base.

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Again hard pass. If you want to raid people who are offline then go play ARK or something like that where they actually encourage that sort of thing. I won't presume to speak for the others, but I have zero tolerance for someone who wants to grief other people and tries to hide behind the guise of "meh pvp" or something else. he claims he's not interested in offline raiding yet other statements show that to be a lie. There's a huge difference between actual pvp and griefing. Actual pvp is 2 or more folks duking it out from as equal a starting position as possible. Griefing is crap like continuously spawn camping someone or destroying their stuff while they're offline and have no chance of fighting back. The safe zone block is fine the way it is and actually forces people to use tactics instead of the straight up guns shooting instant gratification methods we see all the time here. As for running the safe zone, if someone has the resources to keep one running for those 168 hours then why should they not be allowed to? He could simply turn the block off on his servers or ask admins to turn them off, but that's not good enough for him. He wants an entire block changed to suit HIS playstyle and to be able to force HIS playstyle on everyone else. Sorry but no, a thousand times no. The more the "sup3r l33t pvp" crowd keeps pushing the more convinced I am the block is just fine as is. Far as I'm concerned forced pvp is a cancer that needs to be eradicated from online gaming today as one group should not be allowed to force their style of play on others. Yet that's exactly what he's wanting to do is force his playstyle on others and for Keen to make it easier to do so.

Also piling onto the grav drive thing - think how much better it is to have a big fat boost button on your hotbar. It can act as a panic button, accellerating your ship almost instantly to max speed and leaving all but the most attentive assailants in the dust. And even if they do notice, they've got 8 seconds to match velocity with thier own drive before you're out of turret range and they can't close the gap. That's just talking defensivly though, such a huge speed advantage is extremely valuable for the attacker as well. Speed is good.

It strikes me that the safe zone was primarily made for the npc stations else people would go around trashing them. Forces players to play nice rather than just turning up and grinding it down for parts, which is.... ehhh. I don't really like that it forces that way, feels rather artificial. Feels very multiplayer focused actually, what with certain types of players who would go around nuking them for the fun of it and then ruining it for everyone else. If it were singleplayer only then sure just go ahead and blow some up, all is fine. Giving this kind of power to players though, maybe that wasn't the best idea. Just like water finds a crack, players find an exploit.

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Unless I just decide to horse around on a single player server or with friends, I have zero tolerance for cheating online. If you need to cheat or use exploits to win or keep advancing, why are you even playing the game since that just defeats the purpose of playing? If folks want to cheat their butts off on their own private servers then more power to them, but nah this cancerous exploit needs to go. I would rather take a loss than cheat because I don't roll that way. Considering grav drives allow someone to have unfair advantages in pvp I would think folks in the pvp crowd would be opposed to it, but I guess they only care as long as their opponent can't have it and they can. Being able to go from zero to full speed with no chargeup is just as bad if not worse than people claim the safe zone to be.

As I said elsewhere I think another system could have perhaps been implemented, but I don't fault keen for going with the easiest solution for them and everyone else. Plus it gives a new block to play with. Better anti-griefing tools have been needed for some time and no it's not perfect, but it's a tool we have. I happen to find demanding an entire block change its function for the entire community just to suit a small minority as rather arrogant and demanding. It would be like me demanding everyone stop using the hunger system, if one were to release, purely because I don't like it, when all I have to do is turn it off. If/when the Hoover Dam gets a crack they don't just throw out the dam and start over, they patch the crack and fix it. The same thing is true with exploits, you patch the exploits.

If Keen were that concerned over these exploits they would have fixed them already, so we have to assume they are "okay" with them. Other exploits in the past they did not like were addressed and patched up rather quickly.

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That's the mother of all fallacious arguments right there. That line of argument is like saying "oh this bank Bill Gates keeps his money in hasn't fixed this security issue that lets me take money from his bank account, so they must not care. Let me just siphon off a few million." Or another example "World of Warcraft hasn't patched this exploit that lets me get infinite gold on demand, so they must not care." Simply because something isn't fixed on day one or in the first 5 minutes of discovery does NOT mean they don't care, it doesn't work like that. It takes time to fix bugs properly, especially depending on the severity of the break. In this instance the question becomes, how do they fix the Safe Zone exploit without compromising the function of the block. The same thing would be true for gravity drives, how do they stop it without compromising the gravity generators. Fixing bugs and exploits isn't as simple as flipping switches as much as we all wish it was. If you want it done right it will take time to fix it properly.

Also pretty sure I have heard people begging for shields for ages.. the safe zone of course isnt a shield really but as close to one as you will get to one in Vanilla, so people got what they wanted........yet still complain.....shocker.....lol

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You just acknowledged it wasn't a shield it wasn't a shield, yet are complaining about it supposedly being a shield. what kind of screwed up logic is that? As much as I want to see a legitimate energy shield in game, this doesn't fit the bill and can recognize why it was needed. I do find it ironic they chose this particular method against griefing, however I recognize it for what it is. Either it's a shield or it's not, you don't get to have it both ways.

Considering grav drives allow someone to have unfair advantages in pvp I would think folks in the pvp crowd would be opposed to it, but I guess they only care as long as their opponent can't have it and they can. Being able to go from zero to full speed with no chargeup is just as bad if not worse than people claim the safe zone to be.

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I don't understand why folks consider the gravity drive an "exploit" when it was demonstrated as one use of the artificial block when it was introduced in this 2014 video.

@captainbladej52 I don't think anyone here is interested in cheating or griefing other players, but instead in figuring out ways to balance features of the game. The new safe zones do have some flaws with regard to PVP balance.

I don't understand why folks consider the gravity drive an "exploit" when it was demonstrated as one use of the artificial block when it was introduced in this 2014 video.

@captainbladej52 I don't think anyone here is interested in cheating or griefing other players, but instead in figuring out ways to balance features of the game. The new safe zones do have some flaws with regard to PVP balance.

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That 2014 video demonstrates it's use on seperate grids. I've been ninja'd on that but never mind. The artificial mass blocks are great - can make cannons, get cars to drive around on stations. I think they were added before wheels, people would use rotors and octagonal (lovely ride quality there) wheels and drive around on stations before that even.

And with the gravity drive... It can be killed. It was worked out how to do that ages ago, but unlike some exploits this one has been around for over 5 years. You add a counter force to the generator for every item it pushes, as is done in this mod by Digi.https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=464877997

Balance is key here - you can have both passable PvP balance and good PvE balance. I'm not sure the safe zone falls into either of those tbh. Some of the best experiences I've had were when a cargo ship decided to come on intercept and started summoning combat drones on me. Nasty nasty cargo ships, very rude. Would not have happened if I'd had a big invincible sheild.

There's no gravity drive in that clip. It's showing one grid pushing another. That's the major difference. Gravity cannons are fine. Gravity drives are not.

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I'll take your word for it since you are more familiar with Keen. Personally I enjoy playing around with that exploit (where gravity generator and artificial mass on same grid). Different strokes for different folks.

PvE - A game that pits a player against game-generated adversaries.
PvP - A game where players compete against other players.
Sandbox - A game where PvE and PvP can both occur, and neither is executed perfectly.

This is probably the most fundamental law in the Gaming Universe. Once a game is released, either early or after "careful testing," the search begins for exploits. Once found, the race to be the first one to post it on YouTube begins. KSH does do some pretty thorough testing, but there seems to be a critical flaw. Their people play the game differently from the way that we do. They didn't see the GG exploit because they simply don't play the game of exploits. If they did, they wouldn't have made the GG field of influence so large. The Grav-Walk mod, published way back in 2015, was a better solution (in my opinion) and it would be even better if the maximum size of the fields they generate were limited to no more than ten cubic meters. If you're going to have artificial gravity, you only need it where people are going to walk. Once Keen adopted mag boots, the need for artificial gravity became severely reduced.

The REAL culprit, though, is the Artificial Mass block. Without it, you have no Gravity Drive. If the game had magnetic tires that worked the same way as magnetic boots, the artificial mass block would be rendered obsolete and could be removed from the game. SE tires are apparently made of steel, which is a ferrous metal. I'm not sure, though, that driving wheeled vehicles in stations ever became a thing. Magnetic tires may in fact be totally unnecessary. Bottom line, get rid of the artificial mass. The only people that will miss them are people that make gravity drives. You could still make gravity cannons.

This sounds like me wanting to impose my playstyle on everyone else. I won't deny that, but this is also an attempt to have Keen keep the technology level they wanted in the game without compromise.

As far as safe zones go, the second I saw one I saw fresh meat for exploit hounds. I personally don't think they are even necessary but, you folks go ahead and try to figure out how to make them work in a game like Space Engineers.

I will grant you this one, you didn't say the word "care" specifically, however it doesn't change the overall post that much and my post still stands. Simply because it hasn't been patched on day one or in the first 5 minutes doesn't mean they're okay with it. To slightly alter my above post it's like saying "World of Warcraft hasn't fixed this exploit that lets me get infinite gold yet so they must be okay with it." Or the other one, "this bank hasn't fixed this security flaw that lets me move money out of other people's accounts, so let me siphon off a few million from this account Bill Gates has here." Again it doesn't work like that. it takes time to fix bugs properly and it's not as simple as flipping switches. Otherwise changing that single word doesn't rebut what I said above.

Also pretty sure I have heard people begging for shields for ages.. the safe zone of course isnt a shield really but as close to one as you will get to one in Vanilla, so people got what they wanted

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We have this little bit here where you acknowledge it's not a shield, at least not in the traditional sense. I would venture we agree on that much at least but I won't presume to speak for you on that one.

I don't understand why folks consider the gravity drive an "exploit" when it was demonstrated as one use of the artificial block when it was introduced in this 2014 video.

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In that video they're showing ways the artificial mass block can interact with the gravity generator. As Malware pointed out, it's showing one grid pushing several others, and a basic gravity cannon/torpedo. The gravity cannons/torpedoes are about as close as we're going to get to railguns in game, barring something Keen has been developing. Keen has said plainly multiple times that the gravity drive is an exploit. The problem they have to solve is how to get rid of the gravity drive without negatively impacting the gravity generator blocks themselves. This is part of why supergridding was removed, it was an exploit. Keen graciously recognized some people may have fun with it, and chose to allow people the option to utilize it, even though it's an exploit. Personally I wouldn't have but that's on them.

@captainbladej52 I don't think anyone here is interested in cheating or griefing other players, but instead in figuring out ways to balance features of the game. The new safe zones do have some flaws with regard to PVP balance.

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You might not be and a couple of others may not be, but you will never convince me that bullet_force isn't, and that's based on statements he has made. He claims to him anything goes in pvp, yet wants restrictions and alterations to blocks and the game that would have the effect of him or someone else being able to force potentially undesired pvp. The safe zone was NOT made with pvp as the primary thought and is fine the way it is, save for the pushing folks out of their own base exploit. These are things Keen themselves have said they don't want happening.

Far as I'm concerned I could care less what folks do on their own servers and when horsing around with friends. What I do care about is when someone demands the function of blocks on MY server and that MY ability to use a block, or MY experience be changed purely because the current state of things doesn't suit their individual playstyle. Sorry but no. Not one single player in this game is so important they should be allowed to dictate to everyone else purely because they don't like something. Even then, the folks that don't like the safe zone have the ability to turn it off and they don't have to worry about it. Yet in order to change the function of the block it would have to change for everyone else in the game. If I get pissed off like I said, I have zero tolerance for other folks trying to dictate how everyone else should be able to play a game we paid for based on the subjective whims of a very very small minority. If they don't like the safe zone, they can turn it off and not have to deal with the block, all the while leaving me to use the block as I please for my stuff.

so people got what they wanted........yet still complain.....shocker.....lol

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Let me put it in baby language for you so you can comprehend. So people got what they wanted (that being the shield that they had been asking Keen for, not myself) yet still complain (These people who have asked Keen over the years for some type of shield, Keen complies, the people still complain.. not me complaining)

Again learning to quote someone properly is key. What you did was put in words that I never said in to fit whatever was in your head and you cut in pieces of what I actually said. That does not make a quote.

What it makes is (And I will properly quote the person) "Fake news."

The point I was making with gravity drives Keen knows it is there, they either do not think it is an exploit or they would have fixed it.

Let me put it in baby language for you so you can comprehend. So people got what they wanted (that being the shield that they had been asking Keen for, not myself) yet still complain (These people who have asked Keen over the years for some type of shield, Keen complies, the people still complain.. not me complaining)

Again learning to quote someone properly is key. What you did was put in words that I never said in to fit whatever was in your head and you cut in pieces of what I actually said. That does not make a quote.

What it makes is (And I will properly quote the person) "Fake news."

The point I was making with gravity drives Keen knows it is there, they either do not think it is an exploit or they would have fixed it.

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You acknowledge it's not a shield, so no shield people did not get what we were asking for. You then complain that folks "got what they wanted yet still complain." Yet you just acknowledged previously it's not a shield. So which is it? Otherwise look at my previous posts, you've still not rebutted anything. Simply because an exploit doesn't get fixed in 5 minutes or on day one doesn't mean folks have the stamp of approval to use it.

@captainbladej52 In my opinion it isn't a shield...others if you read this entire post want to call it a shield. And again you put words in my mouth saying I was complaining. Nothing I said was a complaint on my part. (My original post is what is called an observation. Or some may call sarcasm.)

You must be young or your reading comprehension is not up to par so I won't hold that against you. What I do not like however, is someone throwing words that were not even mentioned by me as being said by me.

And since you seem to be kind of new on the block. Keen has adopted exploits into the game.
Your comparison of "oh this bank Bill Gates keeps his money in hasn't fixed this security issue that lets me take money from his bank account, so they must not care. Let me just siphon off a few million." <-(Example of a direct quote, take notes) has happened:

Small rotor head on a large rotor. Wait for it, make sure you are sitting down. They adopted because of an exploit. They in fact made it easier so people could do the exploit. (Since you can not tell what a complaint is or isn't, that was not a complaint. That was stating a simple known fact.)

If you would like another example of an exploit Keen allows is Super gridding. They do at least, give players the option of allowing this in their game or not. Again this was a known exploit, they have allowed to exist.

And these known exploits that were adopted are really not exploits any longer, in Keen's eyes. Which circles back to my original post that gravity drives must not be seen as an exploit by Keen, which is why it has never been fixed. (Again not a complaint, or a pro or con to them, just an observation.) Which may I add, that in my original post I did not say I was for or against the use of them. Nor did I say that it should be fixed or not fixed. You took it on your own (assumed) that I was on a certain side of the matter. I did say (which again is a fact) certain things they considered exploits they found a way to resolve them quickly, which you took as me saying they needed to fix it long ago.

This post you can consider an observation (or sarcasm), teaching moment and the rebuttal you requested.

To the Keen moderators:
I apologize to you guys/gals.
(and to all the other forum users that this was not directed at and
had to read all of this silliness)
I will take my warning point that I am sure is heading my way. However, I was defending myself and offering a requested rebuttal.

if he's not interested in offline raiding as he claims, then he wouldn't suggest a 15 minute window for the safe zone to activate that only begins AFTER the last member of said faction has logged out, and would leave the base a sitting duck for 15 minutes. As the classic saying goes, I don't need a PhD to know bulls*** when I hear it.

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No. As another poster said, and as I said, the point of the delay is to prevent a person from logging off to protect the base while knowing an attack is imminent. 15 minutes is a little long, I think 5 minutes would be sufficient. But I don't think the safe zone block should be limited to offline protection anyway.

If you don't make it then oops, so sad for you, now you have to find another way, either by starving them out, or wait for them to leave.

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You make this argument in several places without actually walking through it. I think you have several incorrect assumptions to reach your belief that you can blockade a safe zone. You cannot for these reasons:
1. Turrets can fire out of it.
2. Jump drives function inside it.
3. It only takes 10 seconds to jump--so the base could just flip to ship and jump away before the attacker does meaningful damage, assuming the player inside builds a few layers of heavy armor.
4. The player inside can fling blocks out with impunity, either using conventional player made weapons or just heavy armor blocks with control panels given to "nobody" and moved with the force of the safe zone ejection.
5. It is quite easy to get resources for a safe zone. I have spent about 4 hours getting 30 days of zone chips. Sure, the uranium is a bit slower, but at the end of the day the safe zone player just needs to feed half a large reactor.
6. The range of a safe zone is 500m from the block, meaning that turrets outside the zone cannot cover even one face of a cubic zone (even if they could be placed flush, which they cannot if you don't fix 1 and 4). So you need firepower that can kill a ship in 10 seconds (100 m/s to cover the minimum jump distance of 1 km) on about 8 positions.

If Keen can fix all of those problems, then you can blockade a safe zone. That is what I want to be able to do.

Simply because the pvp is disabled wouldn't stop "that one guy" from running around and destroying all the NPC trading stations and griefing people that way by denying them access to the economy features.

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I agree NPCs should retain their current admin safe zones (unless Keen can implement a respawn system for NPC bases). That system does not require safe zone blocks, which are far more versatile and dangerous.

In this instance using the safe zone to force people out of their own base is an exploit and is NOT intended behavior and needs to be patched and changed. Thus is not a valid argument to cite as to how it supposedly breaks pvp.

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This is a pretty strange characterization, but thank you for agreeing with me that safe zone blocks unintentionally break PvP and need to be changed.

As for running the safe zone, if someone has the resources to keep one running for those 168 hours then why should they not be allowed to?

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Because there is no counter and it is trivial to gather a bunch of uranium and zone chips, especially on servers with PG roids and NPC stations. I currently have a base that can run for 170 DAYS with a safe zone...

Far as I'm concerned forced pvp is a cancer that needs to be eradicated from online gaming today as one group should not be allowed to force their style of play on others.

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If you don't want PvP why do you concern yourself with playing on servers with damage enabled? What do you need a safe zone block for if you don't want to fight players? Just play a server without damage (or single player) and we can discuss amongst ourselves how to make the safe zone work for those who prefer to have player vs. player combat. Or Keen could even fix them and make the fixed version an option called, "cancer safe zones." The original option can be "captainbladej52's classic safe zones;" that won't bother me.

Realistically, Keen needs to expose the safe zone API so we can try some different modded versions and give Keen an idea of what will work.

If you would like another example of an exploit Keen allows is Super gridding. They do at least, give players the option of allowing this in their game or not. Again this was a known exploit, they have allowed to exist.

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It's not a good idea to be reading much into how long it takes for Keen to fix an exploit. It doesn't change the fact that they're exploits. The two quotes above are exploits that have been addressed, correct. Only then, or with public statements, can you say that an exploit is no longer an exploit. The two above ones were fixed, and the truly exploity one, supergridding, was made optional since some people enjoyed it, while others had problems due to its cheaty features. The supergridding one is a great example, actually, it's as old as the gravdrive - if not older. Look at how long it took for them to fix that. Them having not made the gravdrive optional yet means little. There's a lot of people who still hope and push for such a fix. No, Sir, the gravity drive is definitely still an exploit and until I hear otherwise from Keen, that's what I'll keep quoting

Note: Keep in mind that I have no personal stakes in this. These exploits don't affect me, since I usually only play single player, or very controlled multiplayer.

The 15 minute activation delay after you log off would help against offline raiding, a 15 minute looting spree is not the point. I don't get why some of you guys keep ripping into Bullet_Force for this. Say the owner of a base logs off for a week - thats 168 hours. They come back after having the sheild up for 167.75 hours and all is well as nobody happened to stumble across them in the first 15 minutes because they did a check and nobody was waiting.

A 15 minute delay removes any benifit to combat logging, often a major problem in games like Space Engineers with persistent worlds. If logging out protects you (usually does, player dissapears - cryopods?) and your stuff (which an instantly activating version of the safe zone which turns on when the owner logs off would do) from any possible attack then people will log out to avoid combat. It will happen. Reminds me of the practice in minecraft pvp of digging a giant hole underneath where somebody combat logged so they fall into it when they come back. I guess the SE equivient of this would be to lay a minefeild of turrets and other mixed nasties around the players offline protected base.

Also piling onto the grav drive thing - think how much better it is to have a big fat boost button on your hotbar. It can act as a panic button, accellerating your ship almost instantly to max speed and leaving all but the most attentive assailants in the dust. And even if they do notice, they've got 8 seconds to match velocity with thier own drive before you're out of turret range and they can't close the gap. That's just talking defensivly though, such a huge speed advantage is extremely valuable for the attacker as well. Speed is good.

It strikes me that the safe zone was primarily made for the npc stations else people would go around trashing them. Forces players to play nice rather than just turning up and grinding it down for parts, which is.... ehhh. I don't really like that it forces that way, feels rather artificial. Feels very multiplayer focused actually, what with certain types of players who would go around nuking them for the fun of it and then ruining it for everyone else. If it were singleplayer only then sure just go ahead and blow some up, all is fine. Giving this kind of power to players though, maybe that wasn't the best idea. Just like water finds a crack, players find an exploit.

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Well said Dax. I find it incredibly strange that you have in this thread people that admit to hating the PVP play style and are self declared PVE players yet they feel they have the right to dictate to us PVP players how we should play our variety of the game. It is clear some folks in here simply have no clue about what makes for good PVP because they simply have never played it.

In PVP as others have pointed out everything has to have balance. There cannot be one super weapon or one block that renders all others pointless, everything has to have a counter, a way of defeating it. Everything needs purpose. The shield as it stands does not belong in PVP, it has no counter and cannot be defeated. The suggestions that several PVE players have made over the course of this thread amounts to "stand outside the shield 24 hours a day and blockade them". That is an entirely unrealistic suggestion and one that no one should be expected to do in order to defeat it. It is also pointless because players can warp in and out of the shield.

If the shield could only be activated once all faction members were offline and only after an appropriate warm up time to prevent combat logging then I and many other dedicated PVP players would have less of an issue with it but as it stands it is not fit for PVP.